Library Menu

How Work Goes On in a Limited Life Foundation

In 2020, The Atlantic Philanthropies will close its doors, making it the largest foundation that ever committed its entire endowment during a limited period of time. Since 2001, Tony Proscio, Associate Director for Research at the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, has been chronicling the foundation’s work. Others, too, have been writing about how Atlantic has been approaching its final years. Among the topics covered in this collection:

How Atlantic narrowed its grantmaking focus and set a timetable for the foundation’s concluding period for each program and each country where it operates

Steps taken to address staff concerns as the realities of the end of foundation set in and how the Human Resources department helped employees prepare for their post-Atlantic careers.

The issue of grantee sustainability, particularly in countries and for programs where it is unlikely that other funders are going to step in after Atlantic’s exits.

The creation of a new phase of work called Global Opportunity and Leverage (GOAL) to guide the foundation’s final years of grantmaking.